For help
and support with the guai protocol for FMS, please join the
Guai-Support Group's discussion list and post your questions there. I
do not answer such questions privately, sorry. Information about joining
the group and managing your subscription can be found
here.

My Fibromyalgia Journey

I have memories of
aches and pains throughout my childhood. When I was a teenager I had
problems with headaches that caused me to miss a lot of school. I was
always overweight compared to my school friends, never very active but always
participated in class activities when I had to.

At the end of my final High School year
I got a part-time job in a takeaways, taking orders, making the burgers and
toasted sandwiches, and wrapping the deep-fried foods. When I first
started wrapping the deep-fried foods, I sprained my wrist on the first day,
from the action of tipping out the contents of the baskets. This, in my
opinion, was a major trigger; the aches in my wrists and hands never went
away, and in fact spread to other locations.

In 1983, when I was
18 and in my first year at Auckland University, my doctor at the time explained the aches
and pains I was experiencing on a regular basis as 'arthritis'. He gave me
anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs), and I took them for many years, only complaining
when I thought they weren't working properly any more. I would then be given a
different NSAID, which I convinced myself for a while was doing the job.

In 2000 I (again) changed doctor within the practice I had been going to since I was a
child (something that happened from time to time as older doctors retired and
younger ones started their families), who was not familiar with my 'arthritis'. When I approached her for a
medical certificate (for dispensation to allow a computer to type my answers for
a 3-hour written exam at Massey University) she suggested we take a closer look
at what was going on, and referred me to a rheumatologist.

The rheumatologist diagnosed the general aches and pains I've had for years as
Fibromyalgia (FMS) and the specific pains in my hands as the beginnings of
Osteoarthritis (OA). I had never heard of FMS before; in fact, by the time I
went home that night I couldn't even remember the word!